A Connecticut state court recently denied Exxon Mobile Corp.’s motion to strike the Connecticut attorney general’s lawsuit, allowing all the state’s consumer protection claims regarding Exxon’s alleged greenwashing to proceed.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2020, alleges that Exxon violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) by misleading consumers about the climate impacts of its fossil fuel products and by overstating or misrepresenting its own sustainability efforts. Connecticut asserts that this has amounted to a long-running “systematic campaign of deception,” including alleged “greenwashing.”
Link to State Court Clears Connecticut’s Greenwashing Suit Against Exxon State Court Clears Connecticut’s Greenwashing Suit Against Exxon
In its motion to strike, Exxon raised three main arguments: that the state’s claims are precluded by federal law and legally insufficient under CUTPA, and that Exxon’s statements are protected by the First Amendment. The court rejected each argument and allowed the case to move forward.
First, Exxon had argued that issues involving climate change, energy policy, and emissions are governed exclusively by federal statutes and federal regulatory schemes, leaving no room for state enforcement. The judge disagreed, explaining that Connecticut’s lawsuit targets alleged deceptive marketing and public messaging—not the regulation of emissions or national energy policy—and that the consumer protection claims fall within the state’s traditional regulatory authority.
The court also emphasized that cases finding federal displacement of climate-related tort claims were not controlling because those decisions addressed lawsuits targeting emissions themselves, not alleged deception in marketing. As a result, federal law does not displace or prevent the state’s ability to pursue CUTPA claims based on misleading statements about climate impacts or sustainability.
Second, Exxon challenged the legal sufficiency of the state’s CUTPA claims, raising several arguments about why the complaint may have failed to allege actionable deception. The court rejected each argument, finding that Connecticut had plausibly alleged that Exxon engaged in misleading marketing and public statements about its fossil fuel products and sustainability efforts. The court noted that the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) “Green Guides,” which provide guidance on how consumers interpret environmental claims in marketing, support the plausibility of Connecticut’s allegations.
Finally, Exxon argued that its alleged misleading statements involved protected speech under the First Amendment and did not constitute commercial advertising. The court rejected this argument for now, noting that resolving the issue would require a full factual record and emphasizing that commercial speech receives only limited protections.
Link to What the Ruling Means for Future Climate and Green Marketing Litigation What the Ruling Means for Future Climate and Green Marketing Litigation
This ruling marks the latest in a series of wins for Connecticut–the Second Circuit previously rejected Exxon’s attempt to move the case to federal court in September 2023, and the state court previously denied Exxon’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit in July 2024 on the grounds it could not be sued in Connecticut.
With this decision, the case now proceeds to discovery, marking a significant step in Connecticut’s effort to test the scope of how state consumer protection laws can be used to challenge climate-related marketing by major companies.
Read our chapter on green claims by downloading our Advertising Law Tool Kit, or by listening to our Green Claims episode in Season 2 of the Ad Law Tool Kit Show, a Venable podcast.